Necessities
by Blame-It-On-The-Alcohol
Summary: "You think I'd let this happen when I was out of my right mind?" Wilson comes home from a bad day to find box forts, mortality-defining stopwatches, and how a moment of panic can bring so much to the surface. House/Wilson oneshot. Rated K .


**Hey guys! :) I'm not new to Fanfiction, but I'm a recent immigrant from the Hunger Games ficverse. (Read some Cardio Necrosis fics - they'd convert anyone.) After a year-long writer's block, I have no intention of making any chapter fics à ce moment. Oneshots, however, are a domain I've greatly missed.**

**On livejournal, I happened to see this prompt:**

**"House and Wilson play hide-and-seek in their new home."**

**So, House/Wilson fluff/angst fic. Go.**

**Kara x**

* * *

**_necessities_**

As Thursday nights went, this one had been...a little out of the ordinary. To be honest, Wilson didn't think he had an 'ordinary' anymore, and even if he did, was too shattered to bother quantifying it. He leaned heavily against the door, fatigue settled heavy in his shoulders and screaming monitors on his mind.

After uselessly jangling the key in the lock for a minute or so, the door swung open and he staggered into the living room, crashing bodily into a stack of boxes.

Or should he say, a turret.

He looked up, and his heart sank. A cardboard fortress was set up in the middle of the living room, meticulously arranged furniture carelessly pushed aside to make room. Shaking his head, Wilson pushed himself up, only for a box to then clonk him in the head and send him spiralling.

Oh, for the love of...

"House!" he yelled out into the silence of the apparently empty flat. When nobody answered, he grunted and levered himself up onto his knees, turning his head to glare daggers at House's door. "Leave him alone for five minutes and he's already building forts," Wilson sighed to himself. He pulled himself to his feet, and turned around - straight into the stare of a pair of blue eyes.

"State your business," House growled in a vague German accent.

"What the hell?!" Wilson staggered backwards into the wall, feeling his head knocked forwards with the impact. House's eyes peered out from a gap in the built wall of boxes. "House, did you have to pick tonight to start preparing for the apocalypse? I've had a bad day."

"The zombies could strike at any time. Now tell me the secret password, or I'll have to set you on fire. Just as a precaution." The faint glow of a lighter flame briefly lit up the cracks between the boxes, and House's eyes narrowed.

"House! You burn down this place, and we'll never get our security deposit back."

"I think I lost that two hours ago, when I tried to build an escape pod."

"House..."

"Yeah, turns out these walls really aren't built to handle chainsaws."

Wilson ran an exasperated hand through his hair. "I'm going to bed. Take down Fort Box and try not to take a wrecking ball to the place while I'm gone."

"But moooom!" Even through the wall, Wilson could tell House's expression. The bottom lip stuck out and the puppy-dog eyes. Good thing was, it wasn't quite so hypnotising when you couldn't see it.

"Out."

"Fine," he grumbled, shoving his shoulder bodily through the wall of boxes and sending them raining down to the floor. Muffled cursing could be heard from the flat downstairs, before falling silent. House was standing there, like a king amidst the cardboard rubble, leaning against his cane with an eyebrow quirked upwards in amusement.

"Let's play hide-and-seek!"

"Let's not." Wilson took a step towards his room, imagining the warm and sinking comfort of his mattress, but House stuck his cane out to block Wilson's path.

"Come on. You said you'd had a bad day. Let's get hammered and go hide in closets!"

"You do that anyway. Especially the closet part." Wilson took another step, but more hesitant this time. The childlike glow in House's eyes could get a little infectious, even this late.

"Good one. Seriously, though, hide-and-seek sucks with one person. I know from experience."

Wilson sighed again. "You're not going to let me get out of this, are you?"

"Nope." House's grin was smug and victorious. The way it lit up his eyes sent a slight shiver down Wilson's spine. "But to make it more interesting, I'm adding an incentive. If you win, I have to..." Silence followed, and House rolled his eyes and gestured. "This is when you add something, moron."

"Oh, right. Uh...clean up the boxes?"

"Lame. But passable. And if I win, you have to do what I want you to do."

"Which would be?"

"Ah, that's a secret." House tapped his nose and winked at him, Wilson ignoring the slight pounding it sent through his temples, and the way his breath stoppered for a second in his throat.

"I'll get the booze," he offered, and limped off into the kitchen, Wilson grinning slightly to himself. "How drunk do you want to get, on a scale of 1 to...Lohan?"

"Three, House," Wilson replied firmly.

"Aw, Wilson! That's practically sober. Boring!"

"The difference between you and me is that if you have a hangover, nobody notices because you're an ass anyway, but if I have a hangover, I end up yelling at particularly loud patients and getting punched in the face. Which you videotape."

"Oh, that reminds me. Got to upload that one to Youtube." House came back out holding a vodka bottle and a shot glass, with another one balanced in the curve of his neck.

"This is meant to be a children's game. And I've never seen children down vodka shots quite like you do."

"Well, you should. It's hilarious!" House deftly poured the clear liquid into Wilson's glass. Without thinking, he picked it up and downed it in one fluid motion. It had been that kind of day.

"Who died?"

Wilson froze, the glass clinking against his teeth."Wait, how do you know -"

"Who died?" House repeated. His voice was a tone lower than usual, with an undercurrent of concern.

Wilson looked around as if for an escape route, his eyes darker somehow, and House noticed how achingly tired he looked. Eventually he just averted his eyes and bowed his head.

"21-year-old with a long family history of breast cancer came in for a check-up a few days ago. I found a lump. Admitted her while we checked it out - stage III breast cancer. Prognosis was favourable, but her mother had had the same diagnosis ten years earlier and she died." Wilson cleared his throat, hoping his eyes weren't as red as they felt. "I told her, then left her for ten minutes to process it. I shouldn't - I shouldn't have left her," he murmured, his voice cracking. "When I came back, she'd - she'd taken a scalpel - no idea how she knew - where - punctured an artery -"

Before he could finish the sentence, House wordlessly passed him another shot. He swallowed it gratefully. And then another.

House and Wilson, silently getting drunk in a room full of empty boxes.

Sounded like them.

* * *

"Winner is the one who manages to hide for the longest amount of time. You go first; here's your stopwatch." He passed him a stopwatch which, at close inspection, appeared to be a Tinkerbell one.

"You planned this?" Wilson's voice was slightly more slurred than he'd planned, but his mind was only relaxed, not foggy.

House shrugged. "I had a whole afternoon. It was that or rent porn, and I've got that earmarked for Saturday."

"Good to know laziness agrees with you." Wilson squinted at the stopwatch, noticing familiar initials inscribed on the back. "House...did you steal this from Olivia?"

"Who?"

"My six-year-old ganglioma patient?"

"Well, bald kids...they all look the same..."

"You're unbelievable."

"Hey, I did her a favour. What kind of shmuck gives a terminal six-year-old a stopwatch for Christmas? It's like going, "Hey, here's a little clock you can use to count down the last pitiful weeks of your life! And look! A fairy!"

"Well, aren't you just a ray of sunshine," Wilson muttered. "I'm sure she'll appreciate your thoughtfulness."

"Anything I can do to light up the world. Now go hide, and I'll count to twenty."

"Twenty's harsh. I barely know my way around this flat." Wilson surprised himself by how he was getting sucked in already. He was surprised that he was surprised; as much of a cantankerous, cynical ass he was, House was magnetic. He already knew this. Yet it still never failed to stun him.

"One, two..."

Wilson started walking off casually, pretending he didn't care, but the second he was out of House's earshot he broke into a jog. The fridge was heavy as hell, but he managed to shift it somehow and slid into the gap behind it, pulling the fridge back in to crush his frame against the wall. The light was blocked out and he tried not to think about the cobwebs branched against his skin.

He always cared about House's games. They were a way of enabling him, giving him control. Or maybe he was just as immature as House, if that was even possible. Both eventualities he could deal with. (Just not the third one.)

"Ready or not, here I come!" House's exaggeratedly playful voice forced Wilson to stifle a chuckle. Uneven steps slowly tapped their way into the kitchen, and Wilson held his breath against the silence.

"Here's a clue, Wilson," House murmured as if to himself. "The stopwatch beeps."

Wilson hadn't noticed the faint chirps coming from the stopwatch and cursed to himself, but only mildly. A part of his mind wanted to see what he'd have to do if he lost. Hopefully House was too drunk to think up anything overly humiliating.

A strong, sinewy hand curved its way through the gap next to the fridge and fumbled around in the darkness, eventually securing itself on Wilson's forearm. He pulled him smoothly out and grinned in triumph again.

"You got me," Wilson smiled ruefully, not bothering to wonder why his arm felt warmer somehow with House's hand fastened around it. "I'll count. You run...well, limp off."

"That was a terrible, cheap joke. I expect better from you." House shuffled off with a playful smile. Wilson let his eyes fall half-shut and began to count slowly to twenty, hearing the syncopated steps grow slightly fainter. Through what he could see, it was raining outside; spatters staining the windows and hanging there like crystals, the sky darkening. And here they were, playing hide-and-seek. Sounded like them.

"Ready or not, here I come!"

His eyes swept the rooms, but not hastily. There was no way he was going to win, not that he cared much. The tiredness still throbbed between his shoulder blades, begging him to lie down, but not yet. No sign of a protruding cane or a concealed sneaker; no luminous blue eyes staring creepily out of the darkness behind the appliances. For a minute, Wilson thought to himself about House as he paced. He knew how he felt; that much had been blindingly obvious for years. But would things change now? Now they were living together? Now House was building box forts and winking at him?

Probably not.

(The 'probably' was a glimmer of hope, as opposed to the shutdown of 'definitely', even though he figured the latter was likely more accurate.)

Through to House's bedroom, and still nothing. He resisted the temptation to lie down on House's bed, forcing himself to stay up with the thoughts of the jokes House would formulate about Wilson being tangled up in his bedsheets. The crappy stopwatch was still beeping in his shirt pocket; he picked it up and pressed the reset button. The beeps stilled.

Just as he was putting it back in his pocket, an almighty crash shook the walls of the apartment.

* * *

"Uhh..."

The groan turned Wilson's heart to ice and he was running now, running to the bathroom where the crash had come from, and he saw House sprawled out in the bathtub, the new metal tap gleaming the colour of rust. His breath caught sharply in his throat, choking any words off; his legs turned to jelly.

"House! House, can you hear me?" Trying to ignore the panic in his voice, he tugged House upwards, lifting him onto the floor and staunching the blood flow from his head with the first thing he saw; a washcloth. But it was still bleeding, slowly but far too fast to not be terrifying, and House wasn't stirring. Wilson slapped him, then again with shaking fingers that struggled to detect his weakened pulse. His elbow had knocked against the porcelain in his drunken stumble and his damaged leg was folded up uncomfortably underneath him. Without thinking, he straightened it out, the damaged muscles coiled beneath his fingers.

"House, wake up, WAKE UP!" Tears were rolling down his cheeks but he angrily wiped them away, fumbling desperately in his pocket for his phone while he shook the diagnostician's shoulders. House's eyelids fell closed, and Wilson shook him harder, the only sound filling the silence, his panicky breaths.

Eventually, when his heart had nearly stopped in his chest, House groaned something unintelligible and stirred.

And stared at him, their faces inches apart, the blood still trickling from the washcloth.

Wilson stared back, the phone falling inconsequentially from his fingers and a single tear luminous on his cheek. House's eyes were so blue, it was startling. In moments like this in books and films, they always manage to come up with some poetic metaphor, like glittering marbles in the midday sun filtering through the windows, or endless and infinite oceans. But Wilson's mind wasn't nearly that articulate. He was here. Now. And there was House and blue and House again and his head was spinning, as crimson ran lazily over his fingertips.

House looked almost impassive, but with confusion written in the crease between his eyebrows. Only Wilson would've noticed. Then again, that was true for a lot of things. He coughed, winced at how it jarred his head, and a similar pain shot down Wilson's spine. House looked up at him, his expression almost...scared.

"I guess I win."

"I suppose you do."

House leaned forward and kissed Wilson, slowly, gently, and yet it hit Wilson like a freight train. The impact slammed into his chest as he leaned into it, House's head resting awkwardly on the wall and his eyes never losing focus, his lips moving gently against Wilson's in a slow and matching rhythm. It was achingly chaste and sweet; like they were ten and swinging their legs from the playground wall, not lying in a broken heap on the bathroom floor.

Wilson so badly wanted to pull House closer, feel his lips pressing urgently into his own, deepen the kiss, but he was scared for the head wound. And scared for a hundred and one other reasons. He settled for looping his arm around his back and breaking the kiss, tenderly, to rest his head against House's chest.

It was a while before either of them spoke.

"Wilson..."

"It's fine, House. You're concussed. You won't remember it in the morning."

House sat bolt upright, not even bothering to wince, staring at Wilson with a sudden fire in his eyes that looked a lot like anger. "You honestly think that? You think I'd let this happen while I was out of my right mind?"

"I don't know, House. It's been long enough -"

"- for me to know, yeah, fine. Clearly I'm just an emotionless jackass." The bitterness was tangible, and he looked away.

"That's not what I meant." Wilson leant back, his fingers brushing against the back of House's hand, feeling like he was about to cry. He'd kissed House, after all these years, and now he was ruining it. "If you felt...why didn't you..."

"Fear is paralysing, Wilson. Figured you would know." House cut him off, his words quieter and still more bitter than he would've liked. "Stacy, Cuddy...I'm like the Anti-Midas. I turn everything I touch into dust and - and ashes. And everyone."

Wilson slowly rocked forwards, so that he was almost on top of House, his forehead resting against House's and their eyes an inch from each other. The frightened gaze House gave Wilson nearly took his breath away. "You haven't broken me yet. It's been fifteen years."

"Exactly. It's overdue."

"Don't talk like that." Wilson brought his hand up to House's face, subconsciously stroking along the jawline, against the rough stubble. House opened his mouth and made a pained noise like a stifled sob. "Don't - don't talk like that. I'm not leaving; not again. Not ever."

It didn't seem to reassure House much. Wilson guessed he deserved that, as guilt burned in his chest.

"I'm not going to kiss you again," House continued hesitantly. "Not here. Not in a shitty bathroom with shitty dolphins painted on the -" He coughed again, smiling in spite of himself at how slurred his words were becoming - "shitty ceiling. And yes, my vocabulary is _stunning_ after five shots and a possible concussion."

"Hey, you said the dolphins were cute!"

"I lied. You should try it sometime. Makes life a hell of a lot more fun." House's hand was now running absently through Wilson's hair. "So, what does this make us?" He asked suddenly.

"This makes us House and Wilson," Wilson sighed, the adrenaline being the only thing stopping him from falling asleep there and then. "I'm too tired to work out anything else."

"Me too. Want to go to bed?" He winced at the connotations. "Separately. Unless..." He looked up, met Wilson's eyes again. "Just so you know, I don't mean -"

"I know what you mean." Wilson smiled against his skin and looked up to match his gaze. On one hand, the thought of a soft mattress and House curled up next to him was intoxicating. On the other hand...well, House was still bleeding, and if they got up he'd have to disattach to get bandages and such and the doubts would start and the moment would be broken.

"Let's just stay here," House finally decided, after what seemed like hours. His voice rang melodically against the tiles.

"But what about your head?"

"It's clotting off. If I die in the middle of the night, I'll be sure to let you know."

"Good," Wilson murmured, and closed his eyes, House soon following.

And while the rain pelted it down outside, soaking the barren concrete a darker shade of grey, Wilson's arms were twined around House's chest, with House's head resting on Wilson's.

It didn't sound like them.

_Maybe it should,_ Wilson thought, before he sank into unconsciousness.

* * *

**First oneshot in a long time, so please tell me what you think! :) Special thanks hanks to Cardio Necrosis, for inspiring me to start writing again, and to Vospitanniy for making addictive electro songs that kept me awake until 3am to finish this. And to any of my beloved previous HG and Glee readers who have read this.**

**Peace!**

**Kara x**


End file.
